2013-2014 SFL Annual Report 1 | Page 34

SFL Annual Report 2013-2014 Africa West African Conference Attendees: 354 East African Conference Attendees: 476 2013-2014 Leadership: Local Coordinators: 30 Exec. Board: 9 Student Groups: 35 Total: 39 2013 West Africa Regional Conference On July 26 and 27, more than 350 students gathered at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria for Students For Liberty’s first ever West African Regional Conference to learn about liberty. The majority of attendees were exposed to the fundamental ideas of liberty for the first time and left the conference pondering questions they had never before considered about the role of government. The conference also gave students from various schools an opportunity to network and begin to repair the ethnic tensions that continue to divide Nigeria. Dishearteningly, 26 students from Ghana who raised enough money to rent a bus and drive to the conference were denied entry to Nigeria because they couldn’t afford the border guards’ bribes. While they negotiated with the guards overnight, they ran out of food, water, and even enough money for gas to get home. While emergency funds were transferred to help them go back to Ghana, these students weren’t able to learn about the importance of freedom from classroom lectures at the conference. Instead, they were forced to learn about it from firsthand experience, and began growing the Ghanaian student movement for liberty with even greater vigor. 34 ...